To date, scant attention has been paid to the possible overlap between sociological efforts to measure the quality of life or well-being of the public and epidemiological efforts to measure public mental health. Sociological measures of the quality of life were developed in response to problems perceived with the fixed-answer scale developed to measure depression, anxiety, or other psychological disturbances. The initial questions devised to measure life satisfaction resulted in responses heavily concentrated on the most favorable answers, but cumulative research by sociologists has resulted in scales that succeed in eliciting a wider range of answers. Despite criticism even within the field of mental health, the use of brief psychological scales has continued because of the tremendous economies in time, money and research effort. The constant development of new scales of this sort has been attended by much discussion about what they really measure. The analysis we propose would address the similarities and differences of two scales currently in widespread use, one developed to measure depression in the general population and the other to measure overall well-being and satisfaction with various domains of life. The data to be used for this analysis come from two telephone surveys: one of 700 women who experienced a particularly stressful health crisis ad the second, a sample of comparable women from the general population. The proposed research will analyze the correlation of two scales for both populations for individual items and across various demographic sub-groups. Validity of the scales will be tested by investigating their consistency with other measures of depression, recovery and normal life functioning among study respondents. In addition, possible effects on scale responses from telephone interviewing will be investigated.